communicate :: collaborate :: commemorate

This may surprise some of you, but I find writing to be incredibly hard. Often I need a deadline to even get me started to write something down. That's why I only write short pieces that can be finished in a few hours. I failed to write longer pieces many times.

Why is it so hard? I don't really know, but I believe it's because I have to put my thoughts into a series of sentences. The model I have in my brain often makes this impossible. It's too interconnected. In order to put thoughts in the right sequence I have to cut those interconnections, and I don't really want to do that.

How do I get out of this misery? I dream up a story I would like to tell and then fill that story with all the tiny interconnected pieces. Sometimes I forget some of them and then feel unable to put them in later. That's where my editors fit in. They can make the story better, they can add little pieces I missed. My writing is often very bad and can easily be improved by a good editor. In any case, I cannot start writing before the story is complete.

Speaking is completely different. I find this to be much easier. It's the same start. Collect information, put it in perspective, read sources, talk to people and then develop the story. Once I have that, I am done. No writing. No speaker notes. I would not even need slides. I use them to get my point across easier, but they are only there for the listener. The slides don't tell the story. I do. Therefore the slides are completely useless, if you did not hear the story.

I don't mind being interrupted by questions. It's quite easy to divert shortly from your story and look at other aspects of the model. If a question takes me outside my area of knowledge, I just say so. I find "I don't know" to be a good answer. It's impossible to know everything, but you should be able to realize what you don't know.

As you can imagine, I am looking forward to do some talking in the coming weeks. And I will be meeting some of you. ;-)

Are the short pieces you describe the articles you write for heise & co? Long pieces would be essays or books? And vowe.net is mostly about those tiny interconnected pieces?

What I like about "ceci n'est pas un blog" is your way of spreading the "pieces". Often a bit mysterious, sometimes dedicated to a few insiders, frequently indicating background stories. You open yourself enough for readers to be authentic and engaging. Your professional articles are excellent and to vowe readers a bit like an epilogue. To be able to follow the trails of breadcrumbs you leave on vowe.net is reading the "real" story. Your "unblog" is peppered with question marks, which incidentally (or not) is also good journalism and invites us to contribute.

However you do it and why... it work's. Your stuff should come with a warning, "please be aware that reading vowe pieces might seriously distract from prior intentions and urgent todos. First time consumption is harmless, frequent visits lead to potentially long-term addiction."